Touch
by Catsitta
Summary: There was a reason why he always wore gloves. Oneshot.


**A/N:**

Just an idea that's been floating on my flash drive for a while. Enjoy~!

**Disclaimer: **I own nothing!

**Touch**

**By Catsitta**

There was a reason why he wore gloves.

It was not because he wanted to protect his hands from injury, or keep them from slipping from Masamune's hilt during battle. It was not because he was interested in completing his leather ensemble, despite popular belief. It was not because he was paranoid about filth and bacteria, as some others assume.

No. The reason why he wore gloves was that they put a barrier between him and another's touch.

Sephiroth could happily wade through the gore of battle without care, and lead an army into the jaws of war without fear. But when it came to something as simple as a handshake, he found himself paralyzed with an onslaught of emotions. Yes, emotions. Hojo did not manage to strip away all of his humanity during the silver General's youth. He struggled often to comprehend and handle emotions, both his own and those belonging to others, and more often than not, he mishandled them terribly, but he still possessed them. He still felt joy, sadness, grief and anger.

He had no qualms with emotion itself. Rather, he had trepidation towards the intensity in which they berated against him.

The barest brush of skin against his own could pin him against a wall. It sent him into dark places he would have rather left behind. Emotions that lied dormant stirred and seeped into his awareness. With them came memories.

Flashes of mako tanks and needles, white walls and ever-burning green. He could hear laughter and soft muttering as well as screams that might have been his own. Too many sensations flooded him at once. Desperation. Panic. Pain. Hopelessness. And worst of all, nothingness. It was always worse when he could feel nothing at all, when the visions of the past left him numb, reminding him of his darkest hours.

Hours spent suspended in mako, a breathing tube lodged down his throat, weightless yet heavy. Sounds and thoughts became a garbled mess that eventually faded into the barest of hum. His skin was alight with pain until he could feel nothing at all. Mind and body soon were bereft of sensation. It was like being lost without ever leaving home. It was like flying while nailed to the ground. It was like drowning but still being to breathe.

It was when touch grew intimate that Sephiroth remembered hours that eclipsed those that most often lingered at the corners of his mind. Those moments were worse than the worst, so bitingly painful that it went beyond nothingness. He ended up retreating from awareness, if only to find something to hold onto, to chain himself to reality and assure himself that he was alive and well.

Not that anybody knew…not that anybody cared.

No one would ever know the demons in his past—the monsters in the closet that would always lurk, waiting for the touch that would set them free. He would make sure nobody ever knew.

Gloves made it easier.

But not easy.

As much as touch repulsed him, basic instincts still played a role. On a primal level, he still desired a mate, one he could touch and hold…love and make love to. He just wished sex did not cause him so much pain…so much grief and sorrow. He wished he could bask in the moment and the afterglow, instead, all he felt was raw agony as his walls were shredded, allowing the darkness to swallow him up whole.

He became colder to compensate…harder. He became a wall of a man—his barriers more than physical, more than mental or even emotional. He locked everything out and became icy perfection. Distant. Aloof. Uncaring. Like an archangel fallen from grace—possessing the same pride, radiating the same dangerous air, but bitter within—chastised for sins of lesser men.

His friends told him that he could overcome his revulsion towards touch, that the more he allowed for contact that the easier it would become. So he did not protest when they hugged him, or slapped a friendly hand across his shoulder. He barely complained when the youngest First, a puppy of a man, tangled him up with all four limbs in his strange version of an embrace.

They believed he was improving.

So little did they understand.

It was almost surreal, allowing everyone around him to live their little fantasies—thinking that he was okay. Believing that his walls would eventually come down despite the fact that Sephiroth was always building them higher.

No one had to know…no one needed to know. He was alone in this world and he knew it true.

But that was okay.

It did not bother him.

Being alone was ideal. Being alone meant no touching…no emotions…no nightmares. Silence was his prized companion—beloved for no reason other than it allowed him a moment's peace.

He needed no gloves amongst silence.

Silence did not touch.

So why was it that when he at last found his solitude, that point in time where the world around him was asleep, he could only lie awake? Why did he desire to pick up his PHS and press speed dial in a vain hope of hearing another's voice?

Why did he, the most powerful man in the world, feel so fragile?

**fin**

**A/N:**

**Word Count: **880

Please review!


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